The idea of a video game, particularly an MMO RPG, having an in-game player-fuelled marketplace is not anything new. WOW did it, and pretty much every big MMO RPG floating around the market. However, despite me not currently being an MMO RPG type of person, I couldn’t say that for my middle school-early high school self. Though instead of playing something well-known or big like WoW, I put an enormous amount of time into a little-known game made by a little-known studio called Realm of the Mad God, or ROTMG for short.
To describe the game very briefly, it was an MMORPG game made in the Flash engine with pixel graphics, where players spawn in a safe zone called the Nexus then from there they can enter different realms, each being the realm of the Mad God, Oryx, players then have access to different bosses, dungeons, enemies. After, killing certain world bosses, Oryx will teleport everyone in the realm into his castle, and after slaying Oryx, the realm will shutdown and everyone would be sent back to the nexus. (of course, thats not everything, and also that was how the game was way back then, now its so much different).
In terms of gameplay, it’s a top-down bullet hell shooter MMORPG, so imagine the Binding of Isaac’s except there are servers full of Isaacs shooting monsters and stuff for loot. Much like other MMORPGs, there are monsters with differing levels of loot dependent on the difficulty of the monster fought, be it a world boss, a dungeon boss from an early-level dungeon, or bosses from the end-game dungeons. Obviously, items such as weapons, armors, rings, and abilities were dropped and traded with high frequency due to their immediate usage. But within the game, though your class gains stats (there are 8: health, mana, dexterity, defense, vitality, wisdom, speed, and attack) when leveling up, every character can only level up to level 20. However, each class has a unique ‘Max’ state number, meaning that after their base stats are achieved from reaching level 20, they can still go up in value until their max stat. For example, Knight is the tankiest class as a max stat for defense of 40, 20 points more than their level 20 defense stat, as opposed to the Archer’s max def stat of 25. So, how do you gain these additional stats? Aside from items that give you stat bonuses, the only way to permanently increase your stats is through potions, which are dropped through a variety of ways, mostly through boss drops. In fact, it is the most common thing to drop from bosses across the majority of content within the game.
As such, pots are often used as a step in for currency since there isn’t a public currency like Gold in WoW or Runescape, and premium currency, which is called gold, can’t be traded with players. Of all the stat pots, the most valued is Life Pots, which are only dropped commonly in super-end game content and rarely in other easier content. And given that death is permanent in ROTMG, having as much life is very very important, thus it has a lot of demand. However, there aren’t a lot of life pots circulating, as not many people are willing to risk their characters unless you’re a super grinder, which, admittedly, if you’re playing this super niche game for a long time, you probably are one. That aside, with these items and most importantly, potions, players could engage in trade with other players, and it’s through this trading system that Realm of the Mad God reveals a miniature economy.
Unlike large MMOs with more structured auction houses or fixed pricing, ROTMG’s economy was almost completely laissez-faire. As in, the players pretty much decided as a community to collectively decide what the prices of each other should roughly be. And even in this regard, nothing is completely rigid, as most transactions were handled on a player-by-player basis. For example, a “Ring of Decades,” or a “Deca” for short, was traded during my time of playing, traded at around 8 pots of life. Back then, Decas could only drop as a rare drop from a boss inside one of the game’s hardest end-game dungeons. And as an item, it was really good. Therefore, all of these characteristics made the ring highly sought after, thus its pretty steep price. But even then, I’ve seen people sell Decas for 3 lifes a pop or for more; sometimes, they’re traded for skins instead, which can only be bought with real-world money. The point is, despite the community deciding that 8 life for a Deca being a fair price point, in the end, it all depends on what the seller and buyer agree on, and as long as both agree to the trade by clicking on the accept trade button.
Also, to further demonstrate this super laid back way of transaction, unlike mmorpgs like Wow, where there’s a centralized way to conduct trades like an auction house or whatever, the most common way to advertise your trade is to literally go to a populated server, like US-East 1 or 2, and stay around the area where people spawn when entering the server, and type in all chat, “S> <Insert Item> <Insert Price> @<Player ID>” with S> indicating your selling an item for a specific price, and if you wanted to buy something for a specific price, replace S> with B>. People (including me) would literally spend hours just spamming this in chat, hoping that someone would see it and conduct a trade. Below is a snapshot of what it usually looks like
Of course there’s a lot more I could talk about this game, as it’s pretty much my childhood, but if there’s one thing I don’t miss from playing this game non-stop, it’s afking for hours on end, spamming my control c and v just hoping for a miracle that someone would notice me in the sea of other afkers who are also spamming c and v.
